You can have a deep and complex campaign with simple parts. The way you make it complex is by complicating the interactions. The simple parts in my campaign. A misanthropic great druid: He hates people and wants them to stop destroying his forest Barbarian warrior woman who usurped a small fief: Has her own code of honor …
Category: game mastering advice
Customize Your Description
Different people see the world differently. I grew up around blue collar tradesmen. Most of my family have skilled trades, farm, or work in factories. Something I learned from that experience is that a plumber looks at a toilet differently than you do. A friend's dad was a linesman for the electric company. We'd be …
Virtues of Great Game Masters: Discipline
I struggle with this one but I think it's important none the less. A great game master needs to have a disciplined approach to preparing for a game, effective note-taking, understanding and applying rules, adjudication where the rules don't cover and all the rest. By remaining disciplined, the game master will consistently and reliably produce …
RPG’s are Fractals
noun noun: fractal; plural noun: fractals 1. a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, …
Don’t Just Cut
Most of my game prep I do by hand with a pen and paper. I do sometimes write campaign histories or adventure location back stories with the computer. When I go back to revise my work, I cut a lot. Anything that I think doesn't fit gets cut and pasted into what I call my "orphan" …
Trust
Building and maintaining trust is important for a game master. If the players trust you to build a setting, an adventure, a scene that is going to have a satisfying pay off, then they might go along when they aren't sure where your hooks are taking them. If the players trust you then they may …
Concept First, Mechanism Second
The conceptual situation or encounter has primacy in the games I run. I describe the scene with no reference to mechanisms of the game what so ever. The players tell me what they want to do. If the character is a thief and they want to climb a garden wall and what I want the …
Grumpy Wizard 
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